1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a product such as a vehicle and, more particularly, to a production management system for mounting parts accurately on a vehicle body on the basis of the information recorded in an information storage medium such as an ID card.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, for the production management of a vehicle or the like, an information storage medium for reading/writing information by making use of electromagnetic waves or the like is widely used to instruct parts or the like to be assembled in the vehicle, in accordance with the information read from the information storage medium.
In Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. Hei. 6-227462, for example, there is disclosed a production management system for instructing the specifications of parts to be assembled, on the basis of an instruction from a host computer. In Japanese Patent Examined Publication No. Hei. 5-77552, moreover, there is disclosed an automobile production management system for reading information at an assembling step by using an information transmitting medium to instruct the specifications.
By this production management system, it is possible to instruct the parts to be assembled, properly for the vehicles of different specifications, i.e., for the vehicles of different parts to be mounted, thereby to improve the production yield.
When vehicles of many specifications are to be produced, however, there is no means for warranting whether or not an assembling the actual parts is accurately made, even if the instruction is accurate. Further, even if the parts of correct specifications are assembled, it is difficult to specify the parts actually assembled and to specify the product having the parts assembled in case that the parts possibly have troubles.
The invention has been conceived in view of the background thus far described and has an object to provide a production management system capable of assembling parts accurately in a product and to specify the product from the assembled parts.
In order to achieve the above-specified object, according to the invention as set forth in claim 1, there is provided a production management system for assembling parts in a target product on the basis of an information storage medium in which the product-specific information of said product and the parts-specific information of said parts, characterized by comprising: medium information reading means for reading said product-specific information and said parts-specific information from said information storage medium; product-specific information reading means for reading the product-specific information from an actual product; parts-specific information reading means for reading the parts-specific information from the parts to be actually assembled; and comparison output means for comparing the information, as read by said product-specific information reading means, and the information, as read by said parts-specific information reading means, with the information read by said medium information reading means, to output the comparison result.
In the production management system according to a first aspect of the invention, specifically: the medium information reading means reads the product-specific information and the parts-specific information; the product-specific information reading means reads the product-specific information from the actual produce; and the parts-specific information reading means reads the parts-specific information from the parts to be actually assembled. Moreover, the comparison output means compares the information read by the product-specific information reading means and the information read by the parts-specific information reading means, with the information read by the medium information reading means, and outputs the comparison results.
In a production management system of the first aspect, according to a second aspect of the invention, said comparison output means outputs a warning when either the information read by said product-specific information reading means or the information read by said parts-specific information reading means is incoincident from the information read by said medium information reading means. The erroneous assembly of the parts is informed by the warning so that the erroneous assembly on the production is effectively prevented.
In a production management system of the first and second aspect, according to a third aspect, said parts-specific information reading means reads not only said parts-specific information from said actually assembled parts but also a parts-intrinsic information intrinsic to the individual parts, and said comparison output means records said parts-intrinsic information in said information storage medium when the information read by said product-specific information reading means and the information read by said parts-specific information reading means are coincident to the information read by said medium information reading means. From the parts-intrinsic information, there can be specified the product on which the parts are mounted.